will be raised on the field (we have one half poultry seller, with a chicken crate on his of it now subscribed), and a new $20,000 building will grace the present prominent location. Such is very greatly needed, and will take its place with the large Catholic church but one block distant. In keeping with the history of all our foreign missions our greatest progress has been made through our educational work. Today we have matriculated in our mission school in Pachuca 614 pupils of whom 194 constitute the boys' school under the control of the parent board. The majority of these boys are from Catholic homes. This marks the highest enrollment yet reached in the history of our Mission at Pachuca. The influence of the sainted Mary Hastings still operates like a precious benediction upon all departments of our work. She gave her life for this people, and now sleeps at the gate of the city. Nor were the twenty-five years of faithful service ended at her death; many of her pupils' children are now being educated in the beautiful Woman's Foreign Missionary Society building she erected during the last years of her life. The fruition of her hopes is now being successfully carried forward under the wise leadership of Miss Amelia Van Dorsten, of the Northwestern Branch. back, supported by cord bound around his forehead; the charcoal woman, with fuel for your brasero; the bread vender-his cry of "pan dulce" (sweet bread) as regular as the morn; the ice cream man, a bucket of cream on his head and a basket of glasses on his arm, with his screech which once heard is gever forgotten. A second grade of humanity also affords interest-the young man dressed in a pink shirt, scarlet necktie, sky-blue trousers braided with black, and so tight that you marvel by what magical process he introduced into them his shapely legs; a scarlet faja encircling his waist, and a crimson velvet jacket, with his broad sombrero tilted back-laboriously, but with blissful content, "playing the bear" with a fair senorita, between whom the iron bars of the window ever intrude. Mexico, though a land of 110 distinct languages and dialects, unifies all in a universal language-the language of signs. The Mexican hand and eye are eloquent members, and are invariable accompaniments in every conversation. A foreigner soon adopts their expressive language, for the law of the Medes and Persians may change and be evaded, but no es costumbre." never. 66 In July we organized an English Depart- There are no alleys in Mexico, as we know ment in our schools and called Miss Helen narrow street passages in the United States Hewitt, of Elgin, Ill., as teacher. She now-and no back doors to houses-but the enrolls 44 pupils, which include representa- nameology of her streets is unique. In altives from the best families of our city. Her success is almost phenomenal. She has proved herself to be a most efficient and capable worker. Life in Mexico presents an ever-changing scene. Street life offers a constant stream of attraction. A Sunday or a saint's day brings the thousands of Pachuca's population thither. Behold the scene! Women clothed in scanty rags, their coarse, black hair falling about their careworn faces as bareheaded and barefooted they trudge along bent under weight of many pounds' burden. Their lot is not far removed from the patient little burros which under packs of twice their size move in long trains through the city. Then the peon, with his (once) white cotton clothing, red zarapa, sandals on his feet, and a straw sombrero on his head; the market woman, with wooden trays of vegetables on her head and a child tightly wrapped in her blue cotton rebozo slung from her back; the most every city of the republic you will find streets with names and suggestions astonishing in the extreme. Those named for the Deity and religious personages are numerous. For instance, The Heart of Jesus Street, The Street of the Holy Ghost, and The Avenue of the Love of God. Others are Graves of St. Sunday Street, The Crosses of Sorrow, The Street of the New Slaughter House, Potato and Egg Street, Street of the Undaunted Mosquito, Street of the Lost Child, Street of Sighs, Devil Street, etc. Each block is regarded as a street, and often has a separate name. Pulque brings to Mexico the same blighting curse as beer in the home land. It has so woven itself into the thought of the country as to associate religion with its daily use. We have been informed that as the pulque gatherer pours juice freshly taken from the maguey plant into the swelling cowhide and hogskin vats of the distillery he calls out in a loud voice: "In the name of the holy sacrament of the altar: Hail to the pulque and kindred intoxicants, and the most pure Virgin Mary! May the pulque low moral standard of life exhibited by turn out well." May the true light be many from Christian lands who make their quickly given this needy land! home in Mexico. Hundreds of our own countrymen quickly adopt the loose moral customs common to the land, and, degenerating to their level, soon share their vices and sins. This trinity of opposition, together with the high altitude of the greater portion of the country, make the work of a missionary in Mexico difficult indeed. It is ours to marshal the forces against ALL existing evils. In all Mexico there is not a single worker of the great Woman's Christian Temperance Union army, nor of any kindred organization, save the Church. Politeness and affectionate natures are inborn qualities seldom lacking in a Mexican, and are particularly true of the Mexican Indian. To the foreigner he is never presuming, but with hat in hand it is "your servant, sir," and "with your permission." Their gracious manners, with their love for music, make them peculiarly teachable. Bountiful nature and perpetual summer have, however, produced a lack of all appreciation of frugality, and as a result the Mexican peon lives only for the day. The "no thought for the morrow" is his with emphasis. Truly "if I have no tortillas to-day, some of my neighbors have, and they will gladly share, for conditions may be reversed when to-morrow comes." But withal they form a people whose great history is yet to be. Three agencies combine to retard their progress: the oppressive priesthood, with its centuries of practiced superstitions, the awful curse of But the great Head of the Church is gloriously leading to triumphant victory, and the spirit of our sainted Butler finds a general in his intrepid son. Our missionaries, aided by a rapidly growing army of native workers, are pushing the battle to the gates, and this ancient land of the Aztecs and the Montezumas will yet be laid as a trophy at the feet of our blessed Lord and Christ. Pachuca, Mexico, September 21, 1899. A JAPANESE REFORMATION IN RELIGION. THE Japanese are nothing if not imitative, and an attempt is now making to reproduce the history of the Protestant Reformation in Europe, though with Buddhism, not Christianity, as its field of operation. Japanese Buddhism is a very different thing from its Indian original. The faith as taught by Gautama was a simple and unadorned atheism, and although to the initiated in Japan it remains atheistic in effect in spite of its substratum of pantheism, to the masses of its adherents it is a religion with many gods and an elaborate ritual well calculated to play upon the fancy and foster superstition. It has found expression in various ways, in lectures and addresses, and in the press, certain Japanese periodicals being expressly devoted to its interests; and now a society, or new Buddhist sect, is formed for the purpose of bringing together all those who are interested in the reform movement, and of thereby pushing it forward more vigorously and effectively than has been hitherto possible. In the light of this criticism from Buddhists themselves there is but litttle need for others to enter the critical ranks. The missionary, in particular, may profit by the use of quotation, since he is looked upon by many as going beyond his legitimate sphere the constructive teaching of his own religion-if he denounces the religions of the people among whom he labors. There are Buddhists now, however, who are educated men, some of them graduates of Western universities, and they are profoundly dissatisfied with the crudities of the faith as held by their fathers, and realize the The following are examples of the kind impossibility of coping successfully with and severity of the denunciation to which Christianity so long as the accepted doc- the Buddhist reformers give utterance: trines remain what they are and the prac- "Whatever religion be defined to be," says tices of Buddhists go unreformed. This spirit of criticism has been prevalent in Buddhist circles for several years past, and it has had considerable influence. one writer, "Buddhism is on its last legs. No settled peace is to be derived from it. Faith in its power grows daily less. Signs of life there are none. Its professors display no warmth of feeling. Its preachers, with all their noisy demonstration in public, live lives that will not bear scrutiny.” And this is from the pen, actually, of a priest: "I am bold to affirm that the influence of Buddhism upon society resembles that of poison." 66 zines of Japan. The writer, after stating that among the hundred thousand priests scattered throughout the empire only a few lead moral lives, divides the order into a number of classes, among which are the following: There are first what he calls "cornstealing priests,' men who do nothing to earn From still another writer have come these the bread which by some means or other they startling words: 'Buddhism is dead, and manage to procure;" and, second, “drumthe attempts of numerous organs to make carrying priests'—that is, jesters or bufthings appear better than they are are trace- foons, whose chief object it is to please those able to self-interest and to the desire to re- who visit the temples, and thus induce them tain as long as possible the worldly advan- to give money." "Performing priests or tages incidental to the positions occupied by showmen" constitute a third class. They leading priests. Though the thirteen sects are such as "spend their time in exhibiting and thirty branches all have their temples, objects of interest connected with temples, their literary organs, and their priests, there and who receive money for the entertainis no life in the whole affair. The machinery ments they give." Allied with these are is there, but it does not work. The relations priests "who resemble actors in the way of main temples to branch temples, of priests they get themselves up for effect. They to the divinities they profess to worship, of dress in brocade and make a display of sects to one another, of teachers to scholars, themselves in an unbecoming manner." of preachers to hearers, of Buddhists as a Then there are "demon priests.' Like the body to society, are all alike characterized spirits in the nether world, they await with by perfunctoriness, artificiality, and formal- interest the death of parishioners, making ity. Between the faith professed and the nice calculations as to how much money works accomplished there is no correspond- they will realize by the funeral ceremonies. ence. . . . There is no feeling of responsi- Being more interested in the deaths of men bility for parishioners with priests, and no than in their lives, they are called 'evil real respect for priests among parishioners. spirits."" The "scripture-selling priests" The class of priests known as 'preachers' are men who "go round from house to consist for the most part of men unlearned, who have never penetrated beneath the surface of things, and whose performances have therefore been well described as resembling those of stage actors. The junior priests take little or no interest in their religion, and look with longing eyes on the lucrative professions. . . . The connection of branch temples with main temples is purely financial. The main temples hold the purse strings, and hence deference is shown to them. The influence wielded by chief abbots is all connected with money. A body, therefore, without a living head, a number of limbs with no living nerves to connect them with an all-controlling will such is modern Buddhism." Quotations like these might be multiplied to exhibit further the utter worldliness of the priests, and still others given, also from Buddhist sources, showing the existence of gross immorality on the part of very many, amounting even to a class characteristic. Further illustration of the subject appears in an enumeration of priestly occupations recently made in one of the secular maga house reading words that they themselves do not understand and never attempt to explain, which, parrot like, they have learned to repeat. They charge so much per passage for what they read." The "speech-selling priests" are also in a way of the actor class above referred to. They "put on the air of learned Buddhists, imitate the voices of actors, sway their bodies to and fro, and make flourishes with their hands, and expound in a haughty manner any subject that happens to occur to them at the time, regardless of the truth." Other classes are called "grave-tending priests" and "priests who sit up with corpses," reading prayers for the souls of the departed. There are priests, also, who make a business of reading Buddhist scriptures before the household divinities of their clients and receive money for their services. And, of course, there are called the "mendicant priests," though with their ranks swelled by common beggars who assume the priestly garb and manner, “and pretend to read or sing scriptures made up for the occasion." The superintendents of the mendicant friars are a class by them- the course of ages is a thing by itself, and selves, and are said "to sanction fraud in deference to its authority should be made consideration of regular payments from the quite optional." "We believe in the fundabeggars they set up in life." These latter mental truths taught by Buddhism," is the are not the only wolves in sheeps' clothing; first article of faith. "We aim at reforming for there are even "priests who collect society radically by a revival of belief in money on false pretenses. They pretend to these truths. We are advocates of free inbe doing so for the repair or erection of quiry and investigation in the study of Budtemples, and they often obtain considerable dhism. We are entirely opposed to supersums from the unwary." Legitimate collec- stition of every kind. We see no reason for tions are made, however, by accredited insisting on the retention of the religious agents of the temple authorities, although system hitherto maintained and followed by the opportunity is utilized now and again Buddhists." thought with the reformers is, as shown by their writings, thoroughly rationalistic, resulting in a sort of pantheistic atheism, a deification of the principle of evolution. "for practicing all manner of deceit whereby It is characteristically Japanese to be the agents enrich themselves." "Trading indefinite as to what the "fundamental priests," so called, are men who "buy and truths" are; but the general trend of sell temple shares, according to the expected rise or fall in the revenue of temples." Resort is often had, moreover, to another class, the "divining priests," who thus by their existence and influence afford evidence of the superstitious proclivities of the people. The "moxa-marking priests" are akin to these latter, and at the same time to the medical practitioners, in that they "make a trade of choosing and marking suitable spots for the application of the 'moxa,' a tiny cauterizing expedient which is still by many considered a panacea for almost every human ill. The "praying priest, who also sells charms," completes the enumeration made by this critic of the Japanese Buddhist priesthood. Not that the enumeration is claimed to be exhaustive, but it suffices "to show to what shifts priests are driven to keep body and soul together, and to what a low status the priesthood has sunk." In addition to this arrangement of ecclesiastical Buddhism as recreant, demoralizing, and inadequate, there is also a marked resemblance in the position thus defined to certain forms of thought which occupy the minds of critics of Christianity at the present time in the West-the same demand for liberty, the same claim that truth has been lost sight of under accumulated tradition and doctrine. "Back to Gautama," however, leads only to the superior ethics of an enlightened man. It leaves to-day, as centuries ago, the spiritual existence of man untouched. The advocates of this neo-Buddhism" are convinced that the philosophical contents of Buddhism in general are supported by the With Buddhism in the condition which doctrine of evolution, and hence that the these passages indicate, and in the atmos- religion needs only to be regenerated on phere of inquiry now so prevalent in Japan, modern lines in order to find universal acand of the national desire to stand well in ceptance." Therefore they fight for it and the eyes of foreigners, it is not surprising | believe that success will crown their efforts that such criticisms' should appear, or that the attempt at reform should finally take the shape of an organized movement. In this new sect or society Buddhism would seem to be set forth in the form best calculated to make it an ethical agency, and from the platform of principles with which it starts out one may judge of its character and of the direction in which it points in respect of theological statement. "There is a great deal that passes for Buddhist doctrine," says one of the organs of the new movement, "that is no part of the original creed, and should be unreservedly rejected. The mass of tradition that has grown up in as against the propagandists of Christianity. It is impossible, however, for anyone who is unbiased to think that the hopes will be realized; because there is appeal neither to the superstitions of orthodox Buddhism, on the one hand, which would doubtless afford temporary aid, nor, on the other hand, to a spiritual dynamic such as permeated the Christian Reformation that is taken as the model; and the reform movement may therefore be set aside as being rather an interesting and suggestive phase of thought than a thing of moment and one to be greatly feared.—Rev. T. M. MacNair, in The Assembly Herald. |